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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

A leader must be a reader. A leader will be forced into countless situations that they have never been in before. Try and painful, stressful, baffling dilemmas and difficulties unlike any they have ever known.

Nothing could have prepared Kennedy for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's a good thing he had read a book of B.H. Ladell Heart a few years before and it was Hart's wisdom that helped Kennedy rationally and calmly deal with that unprecedented moment.

Nothing could have prepared Churchill for the outbreak of World War II, except of course for the decades he had spent as a historian, which intimately acquainted him with the strategic insights and moral clarity required to briefly fight on.

One common characteristic of virtually all great leaders I have known is that they have been great readers, Richard Nixon would later write in life. Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind, it engages and exercises the brain.

Today's youth who sit mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television is passive. Reading is active.

Great advice that a reader of history also knows that Nixon didn't quite live up to in all Nixon watched more than 500 movies while in office in less than six years.

Might he have been better served by engaging and exercising his brain might he have been better off had he had more of his assumptions challenge and fewer of his paranoid delusions indulge.

Marcus Aurelius does not become Marcus Aurelius without having read epic teetus at his teacher rusticus is urging.

Seneca would not have been Seneca without analysts introducing him to the works of the stoics, but equally he would not have been Seneca without his diligent reading of epicurus, which actively challenged his mind and his assumptions.

Just as Kato faced his death by reading of Socrates, a leader must be a reader we must learn from the experiences of others. We must be challenged. We must exercise our brains. We must prepare ourselves for the things will only be able to experience once by learning from the experiences of others.

It's not just the best way it is the only way and obviously this is what we built the daily stoic read to lead challenge about it's great it's like two weeks of.

Stoic inspired insights about reading it's built on my own reading practice that's helped me write the books I've written and do the things I've done check that out right now at dailystoic.com slash read to lead I think it's a bunch of great stuff in there to start the new year off right.

Of course remember daily stoic life members get all the courses for free so you can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.

It's been almost four years since the daily stoic was published this little book the first collection of all the stoics in one book in centuries has sold nearly one million copies in 20 languages.

It's quite possible that your copy having been cracked open hundreds of times now is looking a little worse for where so we have good news.

We are releasing a premium leather bound edition of the daily stoic this limited edition comes with a host of new features to distinguish it from the original a genuine leather cover with gold foil stamped logos.

Gilded edge pages printed on premium grade paper and all new illustrations to delineate each section of the book and more in the book is on sale now but this is the first run which means it's a limited quantity.

So don't miss your chance to own this new beautiful edition of the daily stoic you can buy yours today in the daily stoic store or at daily stoic.com slash leather.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and add free on Amazon music download the Amazon music app today or you can listen early and add free with Wondering Plus in Apple podcasts.

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